Some sobering reading from The Washington Post this week. The author, Matt O’Brien, has taken a chart from Nicholas Crafts “and extended it a bit to put Europe’s depression in, well, even more depressing perspective.”

The Eurozone GDP hasn’t returned to 2007 levels and particularly worryingly it appears not even Germany is immune “its GDP just fell 0.2 percent from the previous quarter”.

Matt O’brien points to the main reason why it’s all going wrong: “Too much fiscal austerity and too little monetary stimulus have crippled growth like almost never before. Europe is doing worse than Japan during its “lost decade,” worse than the sterling bloc during the Great Depression, and barely better than the gold bloc then—though even that silver lining isn’t much of one.”

Sobering times. With America recovering slower than anyone wants, China’s housing market moving in the direction no one wants it too and other nations like Australia and Brazil trying to muddle through by flogging as much iron-ore as possible, it’s hard to see where growth is going to come from.